Does anyone process/color their chips? If so, what kind of machine would you suggest?

[treecutterjr]

We have our own yard that we dump our chips and wood on. We cut & split the logs into firewood each year, but the chips just continue to pile up. I would like to turn the chips into a more marketable product and wondered if anyone had any advice on what a good piece of equipment to start with would be. I have raw wood chips straight from the chipper. I don't know if I should go with some type of small screener, or a small tub grinder?
Any suggestions would help. I would love to know how any of you guys took your first steps into mulch selling. Thanks in advance

 

[gtrees]

We have our own yard that we dump our chips and wood on. We cut & split the logs into firewood each year, but the chips just continue to pile up. I would like to turn the chips into a more marketable product and wondered if anyone had any advice on what a good piece of equipment to start with would be. I have raw wood chips straight from the chipper. I don't know if I should go with some type of small screener, or a small tub grinder?
Any suggestions would help. I would love to know how any of you guys took your first steps into mulch selling. Thanks in advance

I do not own one but I've seen them in action. The rotochopper is at the Paul Bunyan show every year. I know nothing about these machines but the smaller one looks like the most cost effective way to get your foot in the door.

 

[mckeetree]

I peed on some chips once and I was so dehydrated it made them kinda yellow.

 

[old_soul]

I don't know how many yards you have in mind but i do the same thing with the wood and also keep a pile of chips maybe 100-200 yards at a time to use at the house and for the neighbors to use

Anyways we dump most of the extra chips at a company that grinds for mulch. They use a vermeer tub grinder to regrind for the final product. He keeps two separate piles:

- one pile for chips from tree services,grass clippings, leaves, bushes, stumps, etc This all gets ground together to make dark brown mulch. There is no color added to this product

-second pile is for pallets, scrap lumber, and larger wood without leaves on it. This is ground separate from the dark material and this is what gets colored, usually red or black around here.

i talked with him before he said he keeps it separate because the dry wood absorbs the color better and uses less dye because there is less "dark" material like decaying leaves, etc

Just starting out i don't see why you would need to color, unless you have a big market for the colored mulch over the brown mulch

Let the pile sit for a year and regrind, it will darken up plenty by then

Hope this helped you out a bit.........

 

[2treeornot2tree]

A friend of mine takes all the chips the local tree services drop off and makes mulch out of them. He uses a small morbark tub grinder, and uses dye that comes in powder form. He puts one scoop of dye in each yard that goes into the grinder and mixes in water as it grinds. He runs it through two times likes this. It makes pretty nice mulch. The dye comes in 2000lb pallet bags.